Blog

At John Sands, we constantly change the way we run our business and we are always improving and refreshing our products and portfolio. But this change is bigger than that. And I will tell you why…

Let’s start with some shocking facts:

• Over 100,000 marine animals and 1,000,000 sea birds lose their life due to plastic each year *
• Australians use 10 million plastic straws every day *
• Australia generates 4.4 million tonnes of packaging waste per year. Of this, 44% goes to landfill *
• We’re using a million plastic bottles a minute worldwide and almost all of them end up in the ocean or landfill *
• We all want and deserve clean, healthy oceans full of life. Plastic pollution is flowing into our oceans at an alarming rate, and it is estimated there will be more plastic than fish in our oceans by 2050. ^*

This means, we need to act. And we need to act now. We need to stop adding to landfill. We need to recycle more, re-use what we can, and above all reduce what we use.

So what are other companies doing? Around us we can see changes being made. Big companies like Aldi, Qantas, Emirates, Coca Cola, Evian, McDonalds, Starbucks and Coles are changing to become more environmentally responsible.

John Sands is joining this movement to become a more sustainable responsible company and produce the most environmentally friendly products possible.

We signed the Australian Packaging Covenant which hopes to achieve the following by 2025:

• 100% of all Australia’s packaging will be reusable, recyclable or compostable
• 70% of Australia’s plastic packaging will be recycled or composted
• Problematic and unnecessary single-use plastic packaging will be phased out

John Sands is part of American Greetings and together with our sister company UK Greetings, we’re ‘going green’ to reduce waste and use of plastic on a global scale.

Some things we have achieved so far:

• All our are greeting cards are made from environmentally responsible paper.
• Our cardboard display units will be made of 100% recycled material and will be 100% recyclable.
• We’ve removed plastic packaging from our POS items. For the next 12 months, that equates to more than 50,000 plastic bags!
• We are working on smaller metal display units to replace the seasonal cardboard display units.

These are just some initiatives we are working on and there is more to follow… remove all plastic from boxed cards, stickers from cards, plastic attachments on cards, remove laminate from bags, remove over-bags…the list is very long!

So, what can you do in your stores and businesses?

• Talk to your staff and ask them if they understand what can be recycled and what can’t. Check your local councils recycling programs, sometimes there are more options than you know.
• If your store or business is located in a shopping centre, the chance is high that Red Cycle has a soft plastics recycle bin in your centre. Check it out and recycle your soft plastics.
• Order less = waste less! You don’t want to run out of stock but try to find the right balance. Help us to reduce seasonal returns by asking your vendors to reduce the excess inventory they ship to you.
• Let’s try and change the mentality. Just because we have always done something one way, doesn’t mean it’s the “right” way. If you ask your supplier to stop packaging in plastic, they might listen, especially if everyone starts asking.

Besides all the things you can do as a business, we are also consumers. And it’s the little things that actually can make a BIG difference, like:

• Say no to plastic straws.
• Replace plastic containers with re-usable glass options.
• Stop buying plastic water bottles. Use your own and just refill it.
• Use reusable shopping bags whenever you go shopping. Each year, worldwide we consume over one million bags per minute. On average we only recycle one plastic bag in every 200 we use.^*
• For fresh produce purchases, buy reusable cloth or mesh bags.

Plastic and the waste we produce are a HUGE problem. We need to find ways to recycle and reduce; otherwise we might all be drowning in plastic very soon.